A glimpse of the future in animal nutrition science. 2. Current and future solutions

Abstract

-Despite tremendous advancements in the livestock sector, additional opportunities exist to improve even further livestock production around the globe. Forecasting is not an exact science and it relies heavily on past and current knowledge. Improvements in the nutritional sciences (both human and animal) include a better understanding of agents that cause deterioration of human health, improving the quality of animal products, applying effective fetal programming, developing new feeds and feeding strategies, and revisiting longstanding technologies. Improvements in the understanding of the rumen microbiome will enable scientists to increase the fermentation efficiency and, hopefully, select microbial species of greater interest. Improvements in remote sensing and ground-based instrumentation, telecommunications, and weather forecasting technologies will aid in the continued improvements of early warning systems to assist livestock producers in reducing risk and adapting to the changing environment. Broad utilization of sensor technologies will allow scientists to collect real-time data and, when combined with mathematical modeling, decision support systems will become an indispensable managerial tool for livestock production with the possibility to automate low-level decisions on the farm, such as supplementation schedules, sorting of animals, and early detection of disease and outbreaks. The identification of feed efficient animals may be the single most impactful advancement towards long-term livestock sustainability and the promise of feeding the world animal products. We contend that education across societal levels is the first step to solve current and future challenges of the livestock industry. The dilemma has been who will take the first step forward.

Pregnant cow nutrition and its effects on foetal weight – a meta-analysis

“…For North American calf-fed and yearling-fed integrated beef production systems, Basarab et al (2012) estimated that the cow herd (cows, bulls and replacements) requires approximately 82 and 64%, respectively, of total feed inputs. Thus, attempts to improve efficiency of feed utilization and profitability of beef cattle operations will need to focus on reducing cow herd feed inputs relative to system outputs (Tedeschi et al, 2017).…”

The assessment of supplementation requirements of grazing ruminants using nutrition models

“…Implementation of innovative and heuristic approaches that utilize synergies between diverse grasses, legumes, and multiple herbivore species provide alternatives for high-input pasture systems to help overcome existing short and long-term production challenges, such as economic feasibility and resource limitations ( Nicholson et al, 2001 ; Muir et al, 2011 ). However, pasture sustainability efforts have many barriers, complexity of diverse plant and animal communities and stakeholder adoption/management, which may be overcome with modeling (e.g., Sustainable Grazing Systems Pasture Model [ Johnson et al, 2003 ]) coupled with improved technology and smart farms ( Muir et al, 2014 , 2017 ; Tedeschi et al, 2017b ).…”

“…Smart farms and advancing technology combined with modeling have the potential to identify high leverage solutions (i.e., small change produces big results) that could have otherwise gone unnoticed, such as individual supplementation of dairy cattle ( Bishop-Hurley et al, 2014 ; Milovanović, 2014 ). Therefore, the use of smart farms and modeling (or DST), and innovative pasture systems (e.g., multiple herbivore species and diverse plant species) is likely the next step toward improving the sustainability of livestock and pasture systems ( González et al, 2018 ; Tedeschi et al, 2017a , 2017b ).…”

The Conceptualization and Preliminary Evaluation of a Dynamic, Mechanistic Mathematical Model to Assess the Water Footprint of Beef Cattle Production

“…Standardizing the evaluation of livestock water use is essential to determine the actual resource consumption and allocation per area (e.g., country or state). Water use evaluation also helps to indicate levels of unsustainable water use and water scarcity and provides a benchmark to improve upon (7–9). Therefore, one can optimize the management of world freshwater resources based on the water footprint, because it considers direct and indirect use of all components of the water usage geographically (e.g., country, province, state) and temporally.…”